Thursday, 31 January 2013

Wow it's been a busy month! I've been rushed off my feet with screeners, screenings and even the Flight premiere to attend. I've been continuing my writing for Filmoria with many opportunities being thrown my way. My policy is to say 'yes' to anything I get offered in the hope that my enthusiasm and diligence will allow me a better shot at getting the opportunities that I REALLY REALLY want when they come up!

This means any time a PR company send over an offer of a screener, I try to ensure if no one else wants it, that I take it. This month I've had a few TV shows which isn't really my specialty but I've given reviewing them my best shot. The UNIT ONE TV series DVD boxset has Mads Mikkelsen and was a clear influence on The Killing (which I've just started watching after receiving the series one for Christmas) and JACK IRISH Bad Debts and Black Tide are two Australian TV movies starring Guy Pearce and were also pretty good.

I also got the opportunity of writing my first book review. After spending most of the Christmas period racing through the GANGSTER SQUAD book, I think I fairly successfully reviewed it ahead of the film's release (which I have yet to see but keep reading unfortunately middling reviews of).

The DVD and Blu-ray releases I reviewed were THE SWEENEY Blu-ray and DJANGO PREPARE A COFFIN DVD release. It's always interesting to watch a re-release of an old film particularly if there is a reason for a PR company trying to make a buck out of it. Django Prepare a Coffin is rated highly by Tarantino so I got to see where he was taking perhaps a little inspiration from for his latest.

If all that isn't enough, I also wrote a Tarantino retrospective so was kept busy re-watching his old films. I'm also re-watching The Dark Knight Trilogy in preparation for an article for Media Magazine on how conservative the films actually are. I also re-watched The Shawshank Redemption and American History X in preparation for an upcoming article to be published in Splice Cinema Journal.

Tuesday, 29 January 2013

Were actor Donald Sutherland and graphic novelist Alan Moore twins separated at birth? That is the question I posed in my latest letter to make the hallowed letters page of world's greatest film magazine Empire. Below is the letter in full and to my surprise it was published in the March issue 2013.

Dear Empire,

I had to read your exclusive interview with Alan
Moore very carefully to check I wasn't missing the part about Donald
Sutherland playing Moore in an Oscar-baiting biopic of the graphic
novelist. Lurking beneath that awesome beard is Sutherland's haunted
eyes from Don't Look Now. Seriously go and look... see? Either that or
The Hunger Games' President Snow has let himself go a bit.

Sorry about the blurry picture. As usual you can blame my trusty Blackberry camera. Anyway the letter appearing made me very happy! It's all part of an elaborate ploy for them to start noticing me and maybe my name will stick in their heads and one day they will be on my doorstep, bunch of flowers in hand, begging... yes that's right BEGGING me to come and write stuff for them! Mwoohahahahahahaha! Since I started writing to Empire and Total Film each month, this is the third letter I've got in the magazines. This was the first letter I got in Empire and this is the first letter I got in Total Film.

Sunday, 27 January 2013

The gaming industry has over taken Hollywood in making money from people’s
need for escapist entertainment. Hollywood’s continuing quest to win back some
of those lost dollars has involved making endless video game adaptations that have mostly
been depressingly unfulfilling affairs. However the success of the Resident Evil franchise is
testament to the fact gamers will keep coming back for more if Hollywood
targets them.

In Wreck-It Ralph though, gamers will be lured by not just the cameos of old
favourites like Bowser,
Sonic and Zangief but also by the wonderfully rendered newly created
characters. Ralph inhabits the game world of Fix-It Felix Jr. where he is the
villain to the titular hero. After 30 years of doing the same thankless job in
the same arcade, he decides to game jump and find himself a medal and gain some
respect from his fellow folk in the game world.

Using the Game Central Station to cross to new games, Ralph’s world is
stunning and bursting with fun, invention and possibilities for endless
exploring in sequels. It seems sad to complain that we see so little of the
other games featured in the game station because had we seen more of them, they
would not have received enough screen time to be given their proper dues.

As it is, we are treated to three games during the course of Ralph’s
adventures. His home in the world of Fix-It Felix Junior is simplistic and
lovingly retro, the window out into the arcade that is the gamers screen looming
large over the simply designed game world. But when he heads to Hero’s Duty, a
modern first person shooter featuring futuristic machines hunting hordes of
giant bugs, he quickly gets more than he bargained for.

While Wreck-It Ralph is a glorious celebration of retro games, it ironically
dazzles in its rendering of the modern game. When Ralph busts his way into Hero's
Duty, there may well be a part of you hoping for a more adult version of the
film with further Ralph adventures in which he gets lost in the big boy games
of modern warfare and first person horror shooters. It is a thrilling set-piece
as Ralph gets hopelessly out of his depth fighting alongside the other marines.

After he ends up in the candy land of a sugary racing game, the plot settles
giving the characters time to develop and the voice cast plenty of chance to
shine. It gets prettier, less exciting and much more suited for the young target audience after quite an adult opening.

John C.Reilly as Ralph, Jane Lynch as a butch marine from Hero’s Duty,
Jack McBrayer as Felix and Sarah Silverman as a little girl Ralph becomes
embroiled with all play their parts to perfection, bringing to life brilliantly conceived and performed characters. The script is strong, pushing
all the right buttons and the characters are leaps and bounds above what most
video games can conjure.

Despite its kiddie-friendliness the excellent plotting makes this quite the
pulse pounding experience by the time of the thrilling climax. Wreck-It Ralph
features a wonderful voice cast at the top of their game. Audiences are bound
to be addicted, inserting more coins at the box office until they get a sequel.

Wreck-It Ralph is released in the UK on February 8th 2013 and you can watch the trailer below.

Sunday, 20 January 2013

I have quite a few exciting screenings lined up over the next month. Next week I'm seeing both Rebellion, directed by and starring Mathieu Kassovitz and No starring Gael García Bernal, a film where 'an ad executive comes up with a campaign to defeat Augusto Pinochet in Chile's 1988 referendum.

I'm extremely excited about Rebellion as I love Kassovitz's La Haine and though his career has never reached those heights,on the strength of the trailer and the subject matter I have high hopes for this one. No, on the other hand is also very promising as it is the first time Chile have had a film nominated for the best foreign language Oscar.

Both of these I will be reviewing for Filmoria ahead of their releases in February. Below are the trailers:

Later in February I have managed to line up screenings of two more films so far; The Paperboy through the Total Film Screening Club and Hitchcock through ShowFilmFirst.

Judging from the amount of times I've seen the trailer for Hitchcock, I think I might be bored of this before I even get to the cinema, though it does look like it has some fun performances from Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren.

The Paperboy is from the director of Precious, Lee Daniels and is packed by a fantastic cast and looks sweaty and trashy as hell! Below are the trailers:

2012 was an incredible year for me. Basically a big part of starting this blog was to share some of the cool film related things I had been doing. I was desperate to tell anyone and everyone that I got to ask Danny Boyle a question at a 127 Hours screening organised by Lovefilm at the end of 2010. Since then things have gotten better and better and although I may not be getting paid for my efforts yet, I am living the dream of what I have always wanted to do, writing constantly about films!

If anyone reading this hates those self-indulgent blog posts where people look at their successes or cannibalize their own work instead of writing something new and original then please look no further. This is as much for me as it is for anyone who reads this. I feel like looking back into the past to see how far I've come this year and this will be my hopefully permanent record of what has been achieved.

Friday, 18 January 2013

I'm not really sure how much I'm ok to say here so I'm just going to let you know that last night I was on the red carpet reporting on the UK premiere of Flight for Filmoria. I got to speak to Denzel Washington, director Robert Zemeckis and two of the producers as well as having a brief chat with Adam Deacon from all those British 'hood' movies. I also got to meet the From the Red Carpet guy Craig Stevens who used to present Brain Teaser, a daily quiz show I loved back in my student days!

Anyway for now, here's some pictures from the red carpet. There were some other non-film celebrities but I'm afraid I have no idea who they were. The picture quality is terrible due to the only camera I own being on my crappy Blackberry. Sorry!

Thursday, 17 January 2013

Ahead of the some of the biggest and best film releases of 2013, Filmoria have decided to do a retrospective of each director's work. We all got to choose six directors who have films being released this year and the idea is that in the week leading up to the new film, we will write and publish a retrospective look at that director's body of work.

I got to pick six fantastic directors, some of my very favourites and others who have enough significant films to make their body of work worth revisiting for me. I take tasks like this very seriously and would like to get through all the films of each particular director before I write the pieces. Fortunately and unfortunately I got Quentin Tarantino as my first director. Fortunately because I've seen and own nearly all of his films and am looking forward to Django Unchained but unfortunately because I had just over a week to prepare my piece for Filmoria and re-watch the films.

I wanted to re-watch all his films before writing but couldn't get hold of Reservoir Dogs or Death Proof in time. I ended up buying Natural Born Killers and True Romance instead as Tarantino wrote the screenplays but am not including them in my feature. I haven't seen either for a very long time and am looking forward to catching them again.

Anyway I don't want to give away the other directors I am doing in this series suffice to say that I am really looking forward to writing more pieces on some very exciting and interesting directors. I will add links as the year goes on and I write more of the director retrospectives. The next one I am doing will be in March is one of my absolute favourite directors. I'm going to start re-watching his films this week in preparation.

Tuesday, 15 January 2013

I got invited back to the From the Red Carpet Film Club again this week and the film we had to see before our Facebook discussion on Sunday was Best Picture contenderLes Misérables starring Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway and Russell Crowe. Here is my review and here are links to all the other films I've seen thanks to free tickets from From the Red Carpet:

Musicals drive me
mad. All that spontaneously bursting into song seems silly and just doesn’t
slide with me. While many of the songs in Les Misérablesoutstay their welcome,
as does the film slightly, it is nevertheless a bold and brilliant piece of
cinema.

The story of
Jean Valjean, the reformed criminal hunted by the tenacious Inspector Javert,
takes a while to get going until Anne Hathaway shows up and blows everyone else
off the screen. The opening scenes are hampered by exposition that is delivered
in sickly over sized spoonfuls and all in song. While the continuous music makes
the singing more palatable, the film fails to fly until Hathaway’s Fantine
makes an appearance.

Hathaway
delivers heart wrenching emotions at the horrendous situation Fantine finds
herself in. It is the undisputed high point of the film as a character that we
quickly find ourselves caring about reaches her incredible low point. The rest
of the cast are also impressive with frequently fantastic performances from Jackman,
Hathaway and Redmayne. Their emotions, helped mostly by wonderful music, burst
off the screen captured in intimate close ups.

Crowe doesn't
quite have the vocal talent of the rest of the cast and his songs are certainly
the least exciting, though some of Jackman’s songs also make the interest
wobble despite his emotive performance. Hathaway will be robbed if she fails to
get the best supporting actress Oscar, with both her singing and acting being perfectly
in tune with each other and absolutely breathtaking. Eddie Redmayne's Empty
Chairs at Empty Tables performance is another astonishing high point, tear
jerking and hard to match by any of the other songs or performances. Director Tom Hooper’s decision to
capture all the singing live on set really pays off, lending the big numbers an
immediacy and power that stage show fans and movie sceptics may have thought
the film version would fail to capture. The live singing might slightly detract
from the perfection of the vocals but it creates an immersive quality that,
aided by close ups, surely must match or better the experience of the theatre
musical.

The Thenardiers are
a welcome bit of comic relief and Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter
are great fun. It is a joy to see Sacha Baron Cohen relish a role, having turned
down a part in Django Unchained and managing to wash away the memory of his silliness
in Hugo.

Les
Misérableshas a huge cast of characters and it all
revolves around Jackman’s Jean Valjean. While this character is saintly and
less interesting than many others, Jackman delivers an incredible performance,
starting off almost unrecognisable before finally delivering a very emotional
climax by the end. Amanda Seyfreid’s Cosette gets short shrift as we barely
learn a thing about the older incarnation of the character despite a promising
introduction to the younger version. She has the least interesting character in
the story, despite overall pretty poor representations of women. Seyfried hits
the high notes admirably however. Aaron Tveit’s Enjolras also loses out; having
to take a back seat to a soppy love story that sadly lacks as much interest as
the story of the revolt.

Long films are fine but some of the songs go
on and on and as the film hits an emotional highpoint with Redmayne’s rendition
of Empty Chairs, the end of the film after the revolutionaries have lost starts
to sag in comparison. Though Hathaway's reappearance near the end is very
welcome, the young lovers ending up together seems insignificant after what has
come before. Ending on Empty Chairs would have been truly miserable and made
the film version unforgettable.

Nevertheless, Les Miserables is a moving
musical powered by astonishing performances, some brilliant songs and a story
that plumbs the depths of despair before settling on a soppy love story that
fails to capture the emotions of early scenes. It overstays its welcome but is still
a huge achievement from a gifted director and mightily impressive cast.

Haven’t seen Zero Dark Thirty or Beasts and though I’d love to see The
Impossible win something, I don’t think it will be for Watts’
performance unfortunately. Jennifer Lawrence has the best shot I reckon.

“Amour” Written by Michael Haneke“Django Unchained” Written
by Quentin Tarantino
“Flight” Written by John Gatins
“Moonrise Kingdom” Written by Wes Anderson &
Roman Coppola
“Zero Dark Thirty” Written by Mark Boal

No idea but would be nice for Tarantino to
get it maybe.

Overall I think The Impossible deserved more nods and I'm gobsmacked The Hunt isn't in best foreign film! Would have thought Affleck would be in the directing category too. For now I'm off to check out the other categories.

The Impossible opens with a terrible rumble
sound. If you know what the story is about, you are immediately filled with a
sense of dread that lingers long into the film until you realise the impossible
has been achieved. The film is technically accomplished, brilliantly acted by
the big stars and not as insensitive as the story of a family of foreigners
affected by the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami tragedy could have been.

Sadly the
decision to cast Watts and McGregor to enable
the film to have a big budget and sell to a large audience is necessary to
attract attention and the level of investment needed to do the story justice.
It is a shame that a real Spanish family become a British family in the film and
that the deaths of 230,000 people are not the focus but on the other hand as a
story of one family's experience of the disaster, The Impossible excels. The
disaster is too huge for one film and so like World Trade Centre before it, The
Impossible narrows its focus.

Though the film focuses
on foreigners, the local people emerge as the real heroes. The hospital staff,
villagers and others show incredible determination, sympathy and strength in
the face of one of the worst natural disasters in history.

Tsunami survivors are unlikely to find The
Impossible entertaining or have a desire to see it but this is because it is an
incredible recreation of what happened; sickening, horrifying and
breathtakingly realised.

For those not directly affected by the real
life events depicted, it is enjoyable to an extent because although it is
incredibly tragic, there is also so much hope and happiness (if just for this
one family) in the film. However it is a tough watch and unbelievably sad, made
more so by the bravura filmmaking and performances.

The eldest kid Lucas played by Tom Holland is amazing,
carrying much of the film and doing a brilliant job. The two youngest kids
waver a little bit but not enough to do any damage. McGregor is superb particularly
in one heart wrenching sequence involving a phone call home, while Watts’ glamour and beauty are left bruised, battered and
utterly redundant in the face of what her character endures. The production design is so convincing and the many extras
around must have really helped all the actors, but especially the kids.

The moment the wave hits leads to an
incredibly visceral sequence that is terrifying, shocking and impossible to
take your eyes off the screen. The sound design, cinematography and practical
effects combine to create a sickening sense of what it would have been like to
be there. It is astonishing filmmaking; heart breaking and relentless and
completely unforgettable.

Moments of the film may be sentimental but
it's a story that does truly seem impossible. If Hollywood had made it up you would likely be
disgusted. But the sentimental stuff is handled well and with the exception of
a couple of scenes, it is not overly manipulative.

Real life tragedies deserve big screen
treatments if they are handled sensitively and this film stands as a testament
to the Thai people and their selflessness in the face of utter despair. What
isn't appropriate is showing the trailer in front of The Hobbit without a
warning. People should be able to choose whether or not they wish to be
assaulted by such a film and the thought of somebody being ‘ambushed’ by the
images in the trailer is saddening.

I hope that people
will see the film and realise how wonderful the Thai people are and hopefully
future generations can get a sense of what a tragedy it was.

The Impossible
is a huge emotional and technical accomplishment. It manages to tell the small
story of one family in a huge disaster and sensitively portray both the
intimate and the epic of the tragedy. Though the focus is on a foreign family,
half-drowned and lucky to be alive, it is the local people who surface as the
heroes. The performances are amazing, aided in no small part by the incredible
production design and terrifyingly real special effects.

The Impossible is a very powerful film,
incredibly moving and emotionally devastating. Along with United 93, it is one
of the most realistic depictions of a real life tragedy you will ever see. It
is impossible to remain unaffected by the plight of the people in the story and
by the credits it is impossible to move from your seat. Hopefully some of the
profits will be put to good use in the places affected by the disaster.The Impossible is easily an early contender for my top 10 of 2013.